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Gaming With a Headmouse?
seanbhoy writes "Do you have any information on games that can be played by myself? I am disabled from the neck down, and use a headmouse to access the Internet, etc. To get an idea of my disability, I have almost the same injuries that Christopher Reeve had. Can you point me in the direction of similar would-be gamers and computer users? Also do you have any information on games that may work with the headmouse I use?"
You might be disappointed by the quality of the suggestions you get to your question, since most Slashdotters are disabled from the neck up.
Yeah, seriously. Use VirtuNes or the like, and have the zapper set up thru the mouse. I work in a facility with people that have your situation. Using the same setup, I had some of the guys playing Operation Wolf and Lazer Invasion in no time. Good luck!
What is the perfered method of typing for someone with that disorder?
I'm assuming the postere typed their own question.
Note that this isn't an endorsement for either site - I don't know what kind of extra junk they install when you install their games, for example - but these type of games meant for the "casual gamer" usually work with minimal input, and the people who play them certainly seem to like them.
How precise are those btw? As you might have noticed many strategy (turn) based games don't require much speed and accuracy.
I don't read replies by ACs.
I have no idea what a headmouse is or how it is used, but I'm guessing playing DDR with it on the highest setting will eventually make your head fall off...
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Good luck.
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You're going to need something that will work mostly with a keyboard, I take it...
and you're not going to want a first person shooter - too much need for quick reaction times.
A turn-based game would do the trick. Start off small and addictive with that evil NetHack (nethack.org) and in ten or twelve years time when you're done work on the Total War series - Medieval and Rome are both bonza games and not necessarily reliant on twitchy relfexes... but start off with Shogun (www.totalwar.com).
Best of luck. Enjoy.
I am a leaf on the wind
Not sure how helpful this will be, but it appears there's a community of folks with similar interests/needs centered around developer Glen Murphy's Freelook, at:
http://freelook.org/
It appears you can join the forum and post questions to a group which will probably have lots of good answers to your questions. By the way, the technology is pretty interesting: it appears to only require a cheap webcam and some sort of target, which can as simple a small white paper patch on the user's cap, or under poor lighting conditions, an LED or small light source.
**Disclaimer: I've not researched this at all, consider this post merely a brainfart!**
You did not say what hardware/software you are using so I don't know if this is any use but if you're running Windows (and I assume that your hardware just emulates a standard mouse anyway), here's a few ideas.
Most RTS games can be played mouse only so you should be OK with anything Command-And-Conquer-esque. I'm not sure how quickly/accurately you can move a cursor but you can adjust the speed of most RTS games to suit. Turn-based strategy games would be good too, and you can play both types online.
There are loads of online games (cards/board games etc.) which you only need a mouse to play. If you have an onscreen keyboard you will be able to chat as well.
Most FPS games will likely be out of the question as you generally require a keyboard AND mouse to play. Having said that, the original Doom/Wolfenstein games can be played without a keyboard.
Also, try to find out if there's a disabled gamers group either online or near you. I would imagine there must be SOMEONE out there in a similar situation to you, so maybe they can be more helpful than me!
Good luck!
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Isn't /. a game?
Yep. The boss level is really hard.
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I'm assuming heavily mouse-based titles will be your games of choice, and probably not twitch-based ones. Therefore, most online multiplayer games (unless they're turn-based) will be right out.
That being said:
Activision's Total War series
Any game of the Civilization series
If someone codes a set of keypresses for you, games on emulated systems (Final Fantasy titles on NES/SNES/PSX for instance, or turn-based games on a GBA emulator like Advance Wars) would likely be doable.
Some of the older MAME titles - not fighting titles like Soul Calibur, but scrollers like R-Type - could be mapped to your headmouse incredibly easily.
You might be able to convince someone to code you a custom interface to use EQ, WoW, or FFXI if you're interested in them; most of the hotkeys are fairly straightforward and could be bound to a wheel-type mouse interface pretty easily.
Steer clear of FPS play, as you'd need (at least) fingers capable of WASD to do them.
If all else fails, there's always games like Go, Chess, and the like to be played out on Yahoo Games or elsewhere. Yeah, they're somewhat old school, but it's always possible to find a game.
Oh, and I did mention a lot of "someone would have to code up the interface", but for most of them it's just remapping joystick axes/hotkeys to certain mouse movements.
Happy gaming!
I use a headmouse sometimes to reduce hand-strain. (I can't even use a mouse with my main writing hand anymore, because of the unbearable pain.) My headmouse is one of the Naturalpoint models (http://www.naturalpoint.com/). Their TrackIR product is designed with gamers in mind. They list a number of games that work well with the headmouse on their website. Also, they have forums (http://forums.naturalpoint.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb .cgi) where you can find a lot of discussion of headmouse gaming.
I find that some games work better than others. I like using it for strategy games, for example. It's not so good for games like Star Wars Galaxies, where you have to push the mouse left and *leave* it there, to turn left. With a headmouse, this results in you tipping further and further left, until you can't go any further (or turning your avatar back right, if you want to straighten your head back up). D'oh! With pretty much all games, you will probably have to recenter it frequently, regardless of how well they get along with the headmouse.
Another thing that complements a headmouse is the wonderful Shoot program (http://clans.gameclubcentral.com/shoot/). It's a free voice recognition program intended for use with games. Because it's intended for use with a very small vocabulary, the performance is vastly superior to what you'd get from Dragon, and the overhead is much smaller, to boot. It's designed so you can assemble different profiles for all of your favorite games, and it works surprisingly well.
The last thing I recommend is to keep an eye on the Game Accessibility SIG (http://www.igda.org/accessibility/) of the IGDA. They're dedicated to spreading awareness of accessibility needs in mainstream games and sharing methods for making accessibility easy.
Good luck!
Civilization 3 can also be controlled solely via the mouse interface I believe. It's turn-based, and I'm sure a lot of /.'ers can attest to its addictive and enjoyable gaming qualities. ;)
I have not used one myself, but as I understand it, head mouse selections are made by hovering on the spot you want to select for a second. You configure it to read a pause of a certain length over an active spot to be a "click."
This means a slower response time, which makes "twitch-based" shooters a bit of a challenge, but then again, for somebody who has as many challenges to overcome as the author of this question, it might not be beyond the bounds of reason.
Personally, I'm rooting for big advancements in non-invasive brain interaction systems. Many of us are living longer, so the chances of all of us spending part of our lives partially or completely disabled continues to climb. Computer games might offer a great way to push the envelope in this field. Were I a gaming programmer or a biofeedback specialist, I would be awfully tempted to write a grant proposal for a project along these lines, and see if some University wanted to fund it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Isn't /. a game?"
And the only way to win is not to play.
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Spandex Justice
It's a matter of care. A dyslexic bloke I know generates very coherent documentation, emails etc - especially when compared to his peers. Why? He *knows* he has limitations and checks everything he writes three times. His peers just bang out their emails etc and hit "send" with no editing/spell checking etc, because they are not aware of their imperfections.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've been skimming this thread and I didn't see many replies from other users with disabilities. I also use a type of headmouse because of a neuromuscular disability. I've had this type of setup since I was 16 (I'm 31 now and work as an attorney). I've always been a gamer and I tend to gravitate towards games that don't require twitch reflexes. I'm a big RPG fan and most of these are mouse-driven. Check out some of the classics like Baldur's Gate or Planescape. Planescape is especially brilliant. A more recent game I really enjoyed was Freedom Force, a rpg/strategy game that is also mouse-driven. Does your headmouse allow you to hook up separate switches for the left and right mouse buttons? These switches work really well if you have limited movement.
/. and the quality of the responses tends to run the gamut from troll to somewhat helpful. I hope other users with disabilities will see this and offer more ideas.
If you do play games that require a few keyboard commands, check out Game Commander. It allows you to program voice commands for games. It has a pretty customizable interface and you can even program macros.
If you have an on-screen keyboard, you can always go old-skool with text adventures from Infocom.
Stop by my blog if you have other questions. I've seen other disability-related questions posted on
Having humor about one's disability is an ability, not a disability.
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It does seem rather powerful, especially if it can be combined with voice recognition. Although voice recognition isn't perfect it could certainly be good enough to mimic the button pushes we make when playing a game.
It probably won't be as fast though. So you probably want a game that isn't twitch based. Lets review the categories.
1) MMORPG. Although this isn't twitch based I'm reluctant to recommend it. I don't mean to be insensitive, but I believe that you will meet a lot of insensitive impatient people who will only hurt your self esteem. I don't know the average age of an MMORPG player. All I know is that many act like 12 year olds. Maybe if you find trade skilling rewarding. You could be a very good trade skiller, I'm sure. In fact, if you enjoy trade skilling then you can build your character to the highest levels and people want to do business with you. This category is different than the two below, because there is social interatction here. And if you want more of that, then this might be your choice.
2) Turn based strategy. Civilisation... Oh the memories... I'd really have to recommend this genre. This is one of my all time game genres. And you can play it at any speed you like. You invest a lot of time in the strategy and you can ask a unit to do something which will take many turns. This means that later in the game it will do tons of stuff, that is really interesting to you, the player, but you won't actually be doing much pointing and clicking. Whatever else games you play, you should try to do this too. It is just too much fun to not do. To round it up, whether you win this or not _only_ depends on your thinking. Nothing else. You will be as good a player as a non handicapped person. It might take longer. But what the hey.
3) Real time strategy. This is another one of my favorite genres. Although this really can be as much twitching as a first person shooter, you can normally set the speed to anything you like. You might find that this really gets your adrenalin pump going. I know it does for me.
4) First person shooters. This might not work when you play with a random person from the Internet. But you could get a group going with the same type of problem as you. All that matters is that everyone is about similarly fast. This could be a lot of fun, _and_ it could also be super rewarding if you can organize and build a community and make friends. I currently play an MMORPG right now, and the part that is the most rewarding for me is to organize events and try to help people have fun. The game itself is secondary. You might want to look at games such as Ghost Recon which is more "suspense" and "one shot one kill" rather than the Quake "circle/strafe" "rocket jump" game play.
5) Someone else mentioned Myst. Myst and other puzzle games might be good for you. It isn't for me, but many like it. Maybe you are one of them.
And finally, good luck finding the game that is for you. I love it when I have a new game.
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